


No Matter Which Route Home We Take

by sabinelagrande



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Cross-cultural, Futurefic, Gen, Injury, Past Character Death, Post canon, Tearjerker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-17
Updated: 2011-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's time to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Matter Which Route Home We Take

“Could you blow up a planet?” Ronon asks, without prelude, plopping himself down heavily across from Radek.

Radek looks down at the half-eaten donut in his hand. “Right now?”

“Whenever,” Ronon replies, a weird kind of hunger in his eyes.

“Why are you asking me this?” Radek asks him, suddenly suspicious that this is some sort of elaborate joke at his expense. “Shouldn't you ask McKay?”

Ronon shrugs. “He didn't seem too happy about blowing up a solar system. I didn't think he'd appreciate it.”

“It was only five-sixths,” Radek reminds him.

“Could you do it?” Ronon asks again.

Radek ponders the question. “I suppose. Not with we have on hand, though, I wouldn't think.”

“But you could do it?” he presses.

Radek blinks at him. “Yes, yes, it might take-” he tracks the Daedalus in his head, considers what he can talk who into doing, accounts for acquiring supplies- “a month or more to be ready? But yes, would not be so hard.”

“Perfect,” Ronon says, his face grim and satisfied. And then he just gets up from the table and walks off, and Radek can only wonder what the hell just happened.

\--

Radek doesn't intend to tell McKay about it; unfortunately, McKay has to sign off on all of Engineering's requisitions, and he is somewhat skeptical about Radek's purchase orders. When McKay presses him, Radek frames it as an opportunity, a perfectly reasonable experiment which Specialist Dex has proposed, one with real world applications. McKay's response can be heard as far as Lab 4.

Rodney tells John, naturally, over beer and kicking his ass at RC racing. The way Rodney talks about it, Zelenka is being unbelievable, yet another example of how every other scientist in the galaxy is out to drive Rodney completely bug-fuck crazy; of course, Ronon is just being predictably violent. Rodney doesn't appreciate it very much when John just laughs.

John tells Teyla after she puts Torren to bed, keeping his voice low so as not to wake his namesake. In John's voice, it's like an extended joke, the image of Ronon looming over Zelenka only a little larger than life. Teyla smiles beneficently, like she always does when her boys amuse her.

Teyla presents the issue to Dr. Pasztory as she helps her off the floor for the fifth time; the petite anthropologist is studying the beliefs surrounding martial arts among the Athosians and Satedans, and she insists that it is important that Teyla knock her around the gym twice a week to assist in this process. Teyla lays out the problem as best she knows how, explaining without judging, trying to elicit the doctor's true opinion.

Dr. Pasztory gets very, very quiet.

“Did he say which planet?” she asks finally.

–

"Sateda," Ronon says.

Dr. Pasztory sighs. "That's what I was afraid of."

\--

John leans back on the conference table, taking in the argument. "This is ridiculous," Rodney says. "We can't just _blow up a planet_ -"

“Wouldn't be the first time,” Marquez says- Marquez, who is not and never will be Lorne, in the same way that Lorne was never Ford, in the way Ford was never Mitch- and fuck, John is getting too old for this.

"We would like an explanation," Woolsey says to Ronon, ignoring both of them. "I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility, but this is a serious commitment of time and resources, as well as being," he pauses, considering, "an unorthodox request."

Ronon stands up and puts his hands behind his back, looking straight ahead; John wonders if Ronon picked that up from them, or if the military is the same everywhere.

Ronon clears his throat. “On Sateda, before the siege, when someone died, we erased them. Completely. Burned their body, all their stuff- if we couldn't burn it, we dismantled it and destroyed it. No one spoke their name ever again. Got to let go of them, or they can't leave the living world. We had a shield. Lasted until four, five generations ago. Then it gave out. Guess the ZPM got depleted. Didn't know that, then. The Wraith came back. That's when the cullings started. They took our families. They didn't even kill them. They just kept them. How were we supposed to let go? What were we supposed to do? Either they were alive and the Wraith were killing them slowly, or they were already dead and trapped there. So we fought back. We lost. There are probably hundreds of thousands of my people back there. Dead. Alone. They'll be there until the sun explodes unless I do something about it. The Wraith are dead. Sateda is dead. It's time. I have to do this.”

It is easily the longest uninterrupted speech John has ever heard from him.

John tries to think about it. As far as they know, Sateda wasn't nearly as densely populated as Earth, but there must have been, what, millions? A billion, maybe? He tries to imagine all that, everything, every province or country or state or whatever, all of it collapsed down into three hundred people who got very lucky.

For Christ's sake, John's got more than three hundred people in his address book.

"We have to give them this," John says, when he remembers how to speak; no one else says a word.

\--

The Satedans show up in fits and starts- ten or eleven here, one there. A full twenty-five of them show up in the company of Ladon Radim, of all people, having thrown in with the Genii. They come in all colors and sizes, some big and dark like Ronon, some thin and pale; some of them are long-lost friends, while others have obviously never met before.

There are almost no children.

It's almost better dealing with them than with the people who come to visit from Earth, because they don't gawk at or ignore the place where Richard's arm used to be; they just nod at him in solidarity. He has to stop himself several times from offering them a settlement next to the Athosians. Most of the people who got out are from the capital city; these are people who would be far more comfortable in New York or Stockholm than in tents on the mainland.

He does his best to keep them occupied, or at least entertained, but no one wants to talk much; Richard doesn't really blame them.

\--

The ceremony is totally different than Rodney expects it to be; he isn't really sure why, but he's been expecting something more- more ethnic.

God, that's a horrible way to put it, but, really, he's been expecting something out of those awful anthropological films he was forced to watch in college- something more like an alien ritual and less like a high school graduation.

And, yeah, maybe it would feel more like he's expecting if it didn't happen on the Daedalus, but they don't even sing or chant or anything. Somebody who was apparently a big deal- the mayor of Sateda City or whatever- stands up and says a few words, and then there's a prayer to the Ancestors. Rodney is very glad he's watching from the beaming platform, because that way, no one can hear him scoff; it was the Ancestors who got them into this mess in the first place. And then Caldwell radioes Rodney for his cue, he beams down the bomb, and that's it.

There is silence, for a time, and no movement at all.

He doesn't hear anything from the Satedans except one long, shuddering sigh.

 _That's it, folks, show's over,_ Rodney thinks to himself. _You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here._

\--

Ronon thinks, one last time, about Melena, then she disappears behind his eyelids.

He smiles.


End file.
